I have read about other users problems with TOC's, but none of their solutions seems to be any help. My InDesign CS4 crashes either when I try to generate the TOC or when I select a specific paragraph style setting up the TOC. Unlike the users of later versions I get no message when the program crashes - it just happens.

I am working on a book with 40 files (chapters) and inserting index codes and generating index is no problem. I have 12 GB RAM. Please help me.

Probably best to do all 40, then put into a brand new book. However, if you have inter-doc cross-references, save backup copies of all the files first, then resave the new files with the old names to overwrite. Normally I advocate against overwriting the old files, but it's the only way you have a prayer of preserving cross-document links.

I am sorry that I am that tiresome, but I think that the procedure you suggest is rather complex. Therefore I have made a list with each point in the order I have understood is the right one. I hope you will check it:

Save a copy of all my files in .indd-format and store in a secure place (but this is really not necessary since when I export files I still have the original?)

Export the original indd-files to inx-format

Open the inx-files in InDesign

Save them as new indd-files with the old names

Place them in a brand new book

Replace my preferences (or should this be done first or can I try to operate the new files to see if the export removed the crash problem?)

No problem. You don't want to make things worse, so it's important to understand what you are doing.

Considering the number of files involved, start with step 1 (and it is necessary if in step 4 you are going to overwrite them. You don't want to do that with a file that is not better, and we have no idea if the new file will be), then move to step 6, which is easy and fast, but probably will not help. Keeping backup copies is basic good work habits, and something you should do under any circumstances in case of hard drive failure or other disaster.

In fact, let's try one other thing first, before anything else, just to confirm where the problem really is: Create a new user account on the machine, reboot and log in with that account, and see if it continues to crash. If it works in a new user, there's nothing wrong with either ID or the files, and the problem is in your current user account, making it more likely to get fixed by replacing prefs, and rendering the whole .inx madness unnecessary. If it still crashes in the new user, replacing the prefs isn't going to do a thing for you so it's on to step 1 followed by steps 2 - 5 above.

When you get to step 4, you should save with new names, not the old ones, unless you are using cross-reference, hyperlinks, or bookmarks that reference another file. The reason for overwriting (saving with the old names) is to try to keep those external links working. It there are no external links, saving with new names will hopefully give you the clean files, and preserve the old ones as a backup at the same time.

Your last really helped so far - Thank you very much. I had another account and using that the program both ran faster and didn't crash on generating the TOC - untill now. In fact the program used to crash a couple of times a day doing very different things, and possibly this problem is solved too.

Unfortunately some of the documents lost hundreds of links to images - but other documents didn't lose anything. Do you have any esplanation to that?

Would you suggest that I finish my book using the new user account - as I am doing the TOC and the index I am near the termination anyway. Then I have to relink the links which can go easy or be troublesome.

The new user account behavior is very encouraging. Log into the other account again, follow the direction for resetting the prefs, and also see Adobe Forums: InDesign crashes at startup for a list of additonal files in the user library to delete. Reboot and see if it behaves.

I am sorry - I was too quick. After I reset my preferences the program crashed 5 (five!) times - twice even without touching any keys or moving the mouse!

I have read your suggestion about deleting additional files according to the linkIndesign crashes at startup. Unfortunately I don't have any folders called Library. This could by caused by that I run the Danish version af InDesign CS4 and the name is changed. I have tried to search for the files, e.g. com.adobe.InDesign.plist without succes, and the name doesn't look as it is a file. I suppose that your suggestion was that I should delete some of the files mentioned below, but maybe I have misunderstood something.

I am working on the inx-project now and return when I have some results.

The name(s) could be different in the danish version, but the folders will exist in some fashion. These are your USER library folders, as distinct from the SYSTEM libary folders, so they'll bu under your user. On Snow Leopard these folders are hidden by default.

About the question about saving inx-files as indd-files with new or old names I really do not understand the relevance it has if I use old names or new names to save the files. If you save a file which has been converted to another format first I cannot imagine that the filname has any significance!

I wonder about this because I have a lot of cross-references and would prefer to maintain these.

When you open a .inx file and save it, you must now save as .indd. If you have a file with that name already, when you save the .inx using the old name you overwrite the old version with the new one. This destroys any possibility of going back to that old version of the file for any reason as it will no longer exist in the previous state. Using a new name is a precautionary measure.

In a case where you have a book file that contains several .indd files, and those .indd files have links of some sort that refer to locations in another file in the book, those links will always point to the file with the old name, in the old location. In that case, and ONLY in that case, it is necessary to save your new files with the old name in the old location in order to preserve these inter-document links. If you need to do that you should make backup copies of the old files in a new location for safety, and do not delete them or overwrite them until you are absolutley certain that the new files are working properly and there is no possible further use for the backup copies.

We hear from users all the time who have made a change to a file like this, have not saved the old version, and now cannot use the new version for some reason and are faced with starting over.

Of course I don't save the converted files in the same folder as the originals, so no risk for overwriting exists. But maybe the cross-referenses also use the folder name so that I have to use the old folder name as well to keep the cross-references?

I have possibly about 200 cross-references, and if you think that the use of new names will be more succesfull, I am willing to loose my crossreferences and recreate them later on.

The links in your cross references are "absolute" so your converted files must be in the old folder or the refernces will look at the old files, not the new ones.

Cross-references between documents are "fragile" at best, but in your situation I would back up the old files to a safe location and save the conversions in the old folders with the old names in hopes that you don't have to redo 200 links.

Now I have exported all files to inx, imported them to ID, saved them as indd with the old names, placed them in the original folder and in a brand new book with the old name. The program runs without crashes until now, maybe all my cross-references are lost!

You didn't do anything wrong, as far as I can tell (though I would have created a new book file with a new name). Preserving the cross-refs was never an absolute guarantee, just a hope, with the best chance doing what you did (and I'm not sure from your post that they really are lost). You mentioned earlier that you were willing to rebuild the references, if necessary, so I think you are at least better off than you were because the program is no longer crashing.

You are right - thank you. But of course I hadn't checked all cross-references before I wrote, and I just found one valid reference to another file, while the file in question has lost 33 other cross-references. Does this help to explain how I can get them back?

I'm afraid you need to rebuild them from scratch. It wouldn't surprise me if you were to add the old files into a book (see, they are still useful ) and check the references that they were already broken. You'll have to move the new files temporarily and put the old ones back where they were if you try, or you will be looking at the new files for all the link destinations, not the originals.

OK, I was afraid of that, but that isn't my biggest problem. I now worked 2 days witout crashing, but to day it crashed again . And I haven't finished correcting the format changes the inx-procedure has made to some of my pictures, my text and my objects! So possibly the inx-procedure produce as many faults as i correts.

Do you know if ID 6.0 runs more stable on Windows 7? The only reason why I hadn't upgraded is that my wife says that we can't afford ot just now.

I've done practically no work in CS4 on Windows 7, but had no issues with the one book project that I completed last year in CS4. It had no cross-references.

I don't think it's fair to blame .inx for your problems, either. We don't know what the cause of the original trouble was, and it could be making problems again. I'm also disturbed that you say there were formatting changes caused by the export. A .inx or .idml file opened in the same version of InDesign used to create it should be identical in format to the original, and if it is not I would suspect deeper problems on your system.

I now have been correcting manually the object format changes which was a result of the inx-trocedure. It is OK since I had to check all document for other errore just before I shall print my book on 650 pages.

During this process I opened only one dokument at a time and the program only crashes a few times. As I reached a certain dokument it crashed every time I tried to open this one, so maybe this document is the criminal one. Do you think I should repeat the inx-procedure with this document or do you have other suggestions?

In case that the problem goes on, could you help me find the files suggested to delete in the link InDesign crashes at startup. I have searched everywhere but it is impossible to find the foldes and the files. I have turned on viewing of hidden files, but this didn't help. And I don't at all understand the explanation about the Lion note: Note that under Lion, you must hold down Option to see the Library folder in the Go menu of the Finder. It is hidden from normal navigation.

I have no lion on my PC and no such folder is mentioned in the list of deletble files.

You're running Windows, right? Those files don't exisit on Windows, and the note about Lion pertains to OS X version 10.7.x. so is not relevant to you. That other thread won't help you at all I'm afraid.

Exporting to .inx a second time probably won't help, either. But you may be able to isolate the problem by making a copy of the file and deleting half of the pages. If it stops crashing, the problem is probably in the half you deleted, so try again keeping that half and delting the ones you kept, then delete half of what's left. Keep delting halves until you are down to a single page that is crashing. Rebuild the links on that page and try again.

It could also be something other than a reference link. You can isolate an object on the page using the same "divide and conquer" technique.

None of the paragraph styles for the TOC are placed in a paragraph style group, but most of my other paragraph styles are in a group. I have only one group. Other paragraph styles, besides the TOC-styles, are neither in a group. Have you experienced problems with paragraph styles in groups? I could easily cancel my groups in my future documents, but as you may have noticed the one in question is nearly finished.

Besides I have found out - as you maybe have noticed reading the thread - that the problem is caused by a single document, nd I am just working on Peter's suggestion now. The program simply crashes every time I open this document + one more.

Thank you for your suggestions. By hiding all linked files - do you mean hiding the images in the document seeing only the grey squares (display performance)? I can't find any menu items about hiding linked files in the link panel. I have all my linked files (only images) in one layer and hiding that layer on the screen did not solve the problem.

I have moved the paragraph styles from the style group to the style root without any improvement, so I assume that the style group isn't the problem.

I use the same fonts in all my documents. Could a specific font be a problem in one document and not in another one?

I now have found out that there is a problem in three documents - not just one. Every time I - in the book - open one of these documents + another document without problems the program crashes.

Hiding the links means moving them from the current locations on your system so that the links break and ID no longer can find them (which also means thay cannot be in a folder or subfolder with the .indd file).

Now I have performed your suggestions. I split one of the three documents in half and tried to open another document in the book - and the program crashed. I continued to spilt the halves, but since either half still caused a crash, i suspected that neither the text nor the pictures were the problem. I selected one of the halves and removed all text, all pictures, all master objects, but even if I now worked with two blank pages, the program still crashed!!

Then I studied the panels and removed all unused object formats, paragraph formats, character formats etc. At last I noticed that the index panel still contained a reference - even if all text (and with that also all index references (entries)) was removed.

Trying to open this reference to see what it contained, the program crashed even if I had only the document in question open!! I removed the index reference - and the program did not crash any more!!!

When I removed this particular reference in the two other documents, the document did not crash any more!!! And of course I removed it from all documents and now I can open all my 45 documents in the book without problems.

I suppose that the reason why this index reference caused the problem was that it contained slashes. The referred text was

Badeværelse/værksted/mørkekammer

which means Bathroom/workshop/darkroom, but in fact the meaning is important.

The conclusion is: InDesign cannot handle slashes in index references which conclusion I hope you will distribute to any user with problems.

It might not have anything to do with the slashes. Indexes can get damaged for many reasons. If you have time, make a copy of one of the files, add the reference back in (re-create it as new) and see if the crash comes back.